Never cry, never laugh
by A.H. Cokey
Summary: Harry slash Draco. Short story. But if he’s the bird so free, and I am the cat, then what will he do now that he’s caught in the cage that’s Malfoy Manor with me of all people? Harry appears at Malfoy Manor for safekeeping.


**a/n: **This is a short story at 6 or 7 pages, which I did this summer when I was experimenting different styles to write with. This is a slash between Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter.Please R&R.

**Also: **I gave this the rating _PG-13_, but I'm not used to rate my fanfictions, so if anyone disagree, then please inform me and I'll look into it to see if I should change it, thank you _(if this occur,I might have changed it by the time You read this)._

**Disclaimer:** I do not own the characters or anything - they belong to JK Rowling and her fantastic books about Harry Potter. I make no money on this. Please don't sue me.

**Never cry, never laugh**

I cling onto you

_Cruelty comes from fear._

Does it? Is he frightened? Does the fear linger inside him when he speaks? (I think cruelty is white; to many colours to bear, so it crashes and blends to white. Like fear. Or perhaps fear is like the unspoken sentence you want to say but find no breath to say it.) If cruelty comes from fear, then where does love come from? (Love is black; unseeing and colourless. Don't you see? Love is blind and therefore it's black. Love is black ashes of what once was life. Love dooms you.)

He hesitantly forces a half-smile on his pale pink lips. (Rare thing, his smile, even though not willing.) He is near perfection. Smooth skin like velvety rose petals, vivid emeralds that burns you (marks you, like he marked me without knowing he did. I'm caught in a cage. He's the watcher), that discrete aroma of roses and cinnamon, hair darker than the midnight sky and… darker than the heart of a murderer.

So much for a quiet summer alone. I glower at him. His hesitant smile fades. (Are you frightened now? Do you feel the urge to be cruel?) "Potter." I say. The soft summer breeze strokes my cheeks where I stand, watching him. (I hate summer; the joy that everyone feel is a disease that makes you weak. I don't want to be weak. There is no protection to it. And that sickly sweet fragrance of flowers and candy; it seduces you. No, winter is better. Winter is cold.)

"Malfoy." He says, and suddenly it's like his vivid green eyes embrace me and the escape is there no more. What did you do, Potter? What did _I_ do? Your voice is bitter and… slightly disrespecting. (Did you summon cruelty now, Potter? Did you shy away from the fear that tried to captivate you, like it already has done to so many of your precious little friends?) Is that how it's to be? Will those burning emeralds always watch me in distaste and hate?

(I want that no more. Hate is the dark water beneath the thin ice on a frosty lake, it makes you shiver by the mere thought of it, and yet it's not even below zero degrees. Like hate it is, isn't it, Potter? If the water goes below zero, it freezes, like a body dies and goes cold when someone's hate is to cold to keep bottled up. Will that body one day be me, I wonder? Will you kill me like a cold-blooded murderer one day, because you fear reality, truth or… me? Hate and cruelty in unison, that is the mixture that partly comes from fear, isn't it?)

He's faintly nervous now, I can tell. The way he shifts his weight from one foot to another, the way his eyes almost unnoticeable flickers in confusion (Confusion always comes in unison with a question without answer, I've been told.) and the way –

"Aren't you going to let me in?" He asks; breaking the silence we have built up. (Or maybe it was me?) I curse him in my head for having a soft undertone of amusement in his voice. The voice that I've become to both fear and love these days. I've learned the truth now. Doesn't everyone fear the truth? Cruelty, the Son of Fear, again making an obvious appearance. Fear becomes cruelty. Cruelty and love? White and black, isn't it? (I'm addicted to you, Potter. But I don't drink anymore, you know. I don't get drunk anymore when I again know I can't feel your soft rose-petal touch on my skin. But you don't know that, do you, Potter? No, you don't even know that I used to drink, do you? I've broken one addiction, but will I ever break out of the other one? Will I?)

I don't let him in. No, instead I step out and close that big oak door. You know, Potter, amusement was not the best way to colour your words. "No." I retort and start walking with quick steps around the building that I live in – the place I'm supposed to call home. I know Potter is following me, and somehow I feel some comfort in the fact that this time, this time it's _him_ following _me_ and not the other way around.

"Why not?" Potter asks.

I turn unexpectedly to him, nails digging deep into my palms, blonde hair falling into my eyes annoyingly, glaring at him. "Why do you _always_ have to know the damn answer to everything?!" I shout. Stunned, he is now. (Stunned like the waitress at the bar in my fifth year when I ask for another drink when I've already had seven, or stunned like a bird in a cage when a cat strike, I wonder?) "Well, you don't need to know everything, and that's how it is! You're at Malfoy Manor now and not at Hogwarts, here you do _not_ have the privilege to know every blasted thing!" I've missed that. To be able to shout at someone.

"I know I'm not at Hogwarts anymore." He says, green fires (emeralds, they are) expressing annoyance, but he's still calm. (Like the bird is calm before it realises that it's caught in a cage with a cat) I hate the fact that he's able to control his feelings nowadays, when I'm not. (But if he's the bird so free, and I am the cat, then what will he do now that he's caught in the cage that's Malfoy Manor - with me of all people?)

I do not answer. Maybe I can't say the words that I want to say, because I'm afraid to do so. Or maybe I do not answer because I can't find the words anymore. The early afternoon sun shines brightly right on me, embraces me with its warmth (like your feverish eyes does in my dreams, do you know that, Potter?) and I close my eyes with my face against the sun.

The insides of my eyelids are red. I sense him watch me carefully, but I don't care. I feel the small bottle in my pocket against my fingertips, it's tempting me with its devious liquid that I so hard have tried to avoid the past month. And then I open my eyes again, and the world is suddenly grey. (Is that what you are doing to me, Potter? Making me watch the colour of red when the world is turning grey, but I don't see it, because you make me watch something else? And when I open my eyes to the world again, it is grey? Are you going to make me see blood and torture when I no longer look at you, to then abruptly shove me into the world again, to force me into a grey world? Sometimes I think you do.)

I catch a glance at Potter, swiftly, and then take out the small crystal bottle from my pocket. I always have it with me. I guess it is because I'm testing myself constantly, trying to convince myself that I'm not weak, that I won't give in for the tempt of alcohol when I feel bad or when I need comfort. (Need makes you weak, Draco. Really? Does it? Then I must be the weakest person ever. I do need something – and someone.)

I grimace at the bitter taste, the dry and burning feeling of the liquid down my throat. One would think, that after three and a half years of drinking addict, I should be used to the taste. Well, the fact is, I'm not, but it doesn't matter. Alcohol calms my nerves, simply, and that's why it's a part of my life now, that's why I'm now heading right back to the old habit. At least the bottles of alcohol were always there when my mother and father never were. The bottle is empty now; I didn't care to ask Potter. (Why should I?) "Damn it all." I say; irritation and anger clear in my voice that is slightly hoarse from the dry burning liquid I am so familiar to, and then I throw the crystal bottle hard on the wall beside me. It crashes. Small pieces of crystallized glass spread on the grass below (Was that bottle my life, crashing into pieces that I can't repair?) and I can feel Potter's eyes pierce into me. (Burning, emerald orbs, watching me, and I can't look back, afraid – once again.) And I start walking again in angry steps. "Why did I ever try to stop?" I mutter to myself. Alcohol is my blessing in a world without mercy or forgiveness.

"Stop what?" Potter's quizzical voice asks me. (Soft like the gentle breeze in the morning when the vapour mist still lingers. Yes. And the vapour mist is your sorrow, so white and blinding.)

"Why so quizzical this day, Potter?" I reply as I round a corner and the big shadow of the residence is falling over me. Innocence is painted in a layer on my words to cover up my annoyance. (Or possibly it's pure hope that Potter might care that makes my words cling innocently when the hope is the real thief.)

"No reason… So, what is it that you never should have stopped?" He says. I turn to look at him, but only catch a glimpse before warm hands covers my eyes. (The sweet fragrance of roses and cinnamon makes me dizzy; his warm breathe in my ear makes me shiver; the sudden feeling of him so close but yet so far away makes me want to run for the bottle to drench my sadness; and the soft rose-petal whisper is nearly to much to bear.) "Alcohol, perhaps? Do you have a drinking problem?"

Concern and pity. I hate the latter, the other one I do not accept, only glance on quickly before tuning away the soft undertone of concern. "My drinking is not a problem, thank you very much," I say. And it's true; the drinking has become my hideaway from reality. (The reality where you hate me, Potter.) "What is a problem, however, are you." I then say. Also true; the fact that you have to live here at Malfoy Manor because here's the only place you'll be momentarily safe from furious Death Eaters who crave your life; the fact that you sent my father to prison; the fact that you haunt my dreams every night that my insomnia hasn't taken away from me; the fact that you are here; the fact that you are all too close, the fact that –

"Do you hate me, Draco Malfoy?" He asks me with sincere curiosity, so much like a young child's questions. (Who sketched you, Harry Potter? Since you have so much of a disobeying and innocent child in you, and you still are to old for your age, forced to see the reality too soon, torn from whatever you believed in to a world where you don't have the privilege to believe in anything. Who made you the way you are?) I'm about to answer when he stops me with words of his own. "No. Don't say it, Malfoy. Please, don't say it." The last is merely a whisper, and I think for a second that I can hear sadness in his angelic voice. (You're not supposed to feel sadness, Potter. You're supposed to be steel. Never cry, never laugh. That's my picture of you. Ever since you killed the Dark Lord, you never cry, you never laugh. But you aren't stone, either. How does that work out at all? You feel things too; as do I, but you never feel sorrow, do you? Steel. Never cry, never laugh. Just a faint picture of someone that used to be you.)

He takes his hands away from my eyes, and I instantly turn around and find myself standing closer than I thought to him, my face a mere inch from his, noses almost touching, eyes gazing into each others. (Fiery green meeting ice-cold silver, is that it?) "You are a fading image of who you were, you know that, Potter?" I say. "You used to laugh, you know. Now it's a rare thing to see you smile. And whom do you have, Potter, to lean against when the storm is trying to captivate you in its arms? Who do you have who keeps you sane when the world is mad?"

He looks at me. And I wait.

"I stand alone." He finally says. (Don't you fear it? Fear the loneliness like I do? Fear, I believe, is the key emotion a person can feel. Some say its love, I say fear. Fear is pure, love is blind. Love is black. Cruelty is fear in disguise, and cruelty is white. White is all colours blended together. Black is the lack of them. Which means that fear are all colours and therefore the key emotion, and love is no colour, and thus, the smallest feeling to have. But why, then, does love take such large amount of your life in its hands?)

"Why?" I ask. He makes me dizzy, and all I want to do is to kiss him. The proximity is breathtaking to me, and it scares me 'cause I've never felt this way; like I want to pin him against the wall and kiss him for all that I'm worth. (But I can't.)

"Because to depend on another to be there makes you weak."

I snort. "You sound just like my father did one of those days when he was giving me a lecture on weakness," I say. The truth, once again. Although I don't believe you're going to hit me like father always did, are you, Potter? (I can still remember it like it was yesterday; the burning and stinging feeling when you slapped me, father, the way you said I was not allowed to cry, yet if I didn't, you hit me harder, and if I did, you, too, hit me harder; the feeling when you did the Crucio on me, like if melted, hot steel cover my body and thousands of small knifes cuts me. But, I think, what I remember the most is the way you always acted kind to me in public, and then not even caring enough to ask simple things like 'how's school' or 'what have you done today' when home. You were never there when I needed you the most. So I ran for the bottle.) "Why does it make you weak?" I ask.

"I don't know," he says. There it is again, the sadness. You're supposed to be steel. Never cry, never laugh, right? "But I know that I've learned the hard way. And now I have no one."

I can't take it anymore. I back away from him. (Don't do that to me, Potter. You're supposed to be the one thing in my life that's strong and not able to break when everything else does. You're the one I'm clinging onto when everyone else is to weak.) "What, no one of your little friends around anymore?" I say. I'm angry and frustrated now, because he says he has no one. "Well, to bad for you! But you know what? I'm always alone! I've always been alone! And you know what else? I _fear_ the loneliness, but I can't escape from it! And you, you don't _have to_ be alone, but yet you choice that yourself! How's that fair?"

He looks at me. Really _looks_ at me, and his voice is flat (All to flat?) and low, but I catch every bloody word as if he was shouting them in my ear, "All my friends are dead. Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Neville, Seamus, Dean. All of them. I don't want friends that only care because I'm Harry Potter. And I won't whine because of that, Malfoy, I won't drink because of that, I won't. Why do you fear loneliness when I fear the opposite?"

"Because I've been alone all my life," I answer. "And what have you done to pay back for still being alive when they are dead? Never cry, never laugh. Is that your motto? Have you ever cried for them? I know I cry all the time, but for different causes and in different ways. I cry because I'm alone. But I don't cry in tears because in the back of my head I still think that if I cry openly, my father will come back here and hit me again. No, I cry in my heart. I suffer all the time, but no one sees it. 'Cause I have no one. But you never lived the way I did. You never got beat up if you cried, so what's keeping your tears from coming?"

"Rain clouds cry my tears and the sun is my laugh. I am not weak. You, Draco Malfoy, are the one that hold my tears down. You. I needed someone that didn't cry, that didn't fear to be alone, that always remained the way he was and didn't change… Someone to keep me sane," He pauses, and all I can do is stare. Is that the way he looked at me? Am I the one that has kept him sane when he's the one that makes me insane? How does that work out? Where's the justice in that? He has so much more that I have – than I've _ever_ had – and yet he is not happy, just a fading picture. (You stole my happiness, is that how it is? And yet you aren't happy at all. You stole my common sense, now I'm a hollow body with nothing. Alone.) "I guess," he continues, "I did a mistake. You aren't the way I thought. You are a broken piece of art, you know. If I look from far away you look complete and intact, but if I come closer you are broken. Devastated by the fear of the isolation you live in. Pathetic. You are pathetic, but so am I. This world we live in is pathetic. I said I had nobody to cling onto when the storms hits. Well, I lied. I had you. I had you – but no more."

Are we similar at that point, Potter? So we were clinging onto each other in believe that the other one is strong enough to stand head up high in a crazy world, but the fact is; we are both weak? I'm still clinging onto you, because I have no other. How about you, Potter? Who are you to cling onto now when you know I'm weak? "And I had you," I whisper. "I am weak because I needed you… I still do," I pause; he stares at me, possibly not believing his ears. And I have to blink because I feel the tears burn. "Please kill me," I say in a low whisper. "If the world is so mad, then I don't want to be a part of it anymore. Kill me, Potter." Tears. Tears are the betrayers. They show to everyone that you are broken inside. I don't want to cry in front of Potter. I want to be strong – for him. But I can't. I'm crying. So I have to run. "Please kill me." I whisper once more before I set of running over the green grass. Away from him.

But I can't run away from him. As I run, I'm waiting to feel his hand seize my arm, because I can't run from him. Finally, he grasps my shirt and I fall hard on the ground, he turns me around and I try to turn my face away. But I can't escape, and there it is; the stinging burns on my left cheek and the reminding of everything I've so hard tried to avoid. But it's different now; it's Potter's hand, not my fathers.

I scream. I scream for all that I'm worth. It hurts. I do not, however, scream from the stinging pain on my cheek. No, I'm too used to it, too used to pain. And my cheek isn't what hurt the most. No, I'm too used to it, so used to it that the burn on my cheek actually feels weak. No, it hurts because it's Potter hitting me. And it hurts because I'm reminded of my father and the isolation that I live in. (Not a damn thing change. You're dead, father. Potter killed you, do you remember? How pathetic it is that Potter now reminds me of you by hitting me like you did. How pathetic that Potter has become you; repeating something you used to lecture me about; placing a mask to hide his feelings; hitting me. Potter has become a reflection of _you_.)

He grasps my shirt again and yanks me forward. His face is so close, and I wish I could run for the bottle again, but he's not letting go when my fingers desperately try to open his hand so that I can escape. And my tears fall down on my black, sleeveless shirt and disappear. I stop screaming and instead I cry. "No," he whispers, and I want to scream again of frustration. Then he lifts his other hand and tries to wipes away my tears, but I flinch away when his fingertips touch my pale skin where I know his hand has made a mark. (Once again you mark me, Potter. But in a different way this time.) "Oh," he says. "Sorry?"

Why do you hurt me, Potter? What have I ever done to you to deserve this kind of treatment? You hit me. You say sorry when you don't mean it. You haunt my dreams. I'm addicted to you. It's like a low horror movie, where my life is the manuscript. (Kill me, Potter, I know you want to. Kill me.) You steal my happiness. You steal my common sense. You kill me slowly. And you aren't even aware of it. (Kill me. Do it. Ease my pain.)

"You said you didn't cry, Malfoy. If you don't cry openly, then what are these?" He asks.

"They are my soul leaking out." I hiss. "They are the things that's forbidden to me. They are one of thousands reasons my father used to hit me. They are the reason that you hit me just now. They are the things that are partly the reason that I've sadly enough become used to always having someone hitting me."

He's startled now, I can tell. His emerald green eyes stares at me. (What is it you see? Do you see one of your enemies cry? Or do you see me, Draco Malfoy, cry?) I know what he thinks. He thinks that he doesn't want to be like my father. I can't blame him, but I can neither ignore the fact that my father reflects in him. (Like a ghost that haunts a house, right? You don't know how alike my father you are, Potter. How you act like him, how you talk like him.) "What are you referring, Malfoy?" Comes his suspicious reply.

"Nothing." I look away.

(How easy it is to look away, to shy away from the world. I hate the world. How did the world get any better when Potter killed the Dark Lord? He might be dead, but the world is still trashed. And Potter's in the middle of everything. Where am I, then? At his side? How I wish. Whoever made the world used too much time to create beautiful landscapes, flowers, mountains, and too little time to create some sense to it.)

"I'm _not_ like your father, Malfoy," he hisses, but there's really no heat in the words, no passion in the hate the mere thought brings forth inside him. No. He's a fading picture. "I am not," he repeats, and again I think I can hear sadness in his voice, "like your father. He had no feelings, Malfoy, isn't that right?" He asks. I nod. "Are you saying that I don't have any feelings?" Sorrow. Is sorrow your thief when hope is mine? I shrug. He blinks, and for a second I think he's near tears. "You're wrong, Malfoy. It's not that I haven't got any feelings, it's that I have too much."

I have no time to react, no time to realise what he's about to do before he yanks he closer and kisses me. His mouth gingerly kisses mine, one hand curling around my neck and the other one around my waist, his tongue slipping over my lower lip. I do not return the kiss – I'm too shocked. Next, I find myself lying on the ground with Potter on top. And then he suddenly stops to kiss me.

Breathless is his soft and anxious voice when he whispers to me, "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean–"

He is about to dismount me when I raise one arm and softy slip it around his neck to hold him still. I can't bear the thought of not having him on top of me. It feels like the world would crash even more if he lets go of me. I'm too dizzy to talk, so I only shake my head. (You are intoxicating, Potter. My world swirls around you right now. You are like an angel to me. My world must be black, because my world is filled with dizzy and overwhelming love for you. And love is black. Colourless. But I wouldn't know if its black or not, because I haven't cared to look the latest time, all I've been looking at is you.)

"Is that your heart?" He asks. I realise it's pounding fast. (My chest heaves and falls fast, and my heart has never been pounding so quickly, my breath is shaky. Look what you do to me, Potter.) I swallow and shrug. "Probably from running and all. Right? I mean. You'd never…" He trails of and I see tears glimmer in his verdant eyes. (Are you crying now, Potter? Is that tears that's betraying you?)

"Potter…" I whisper, afraid that my voice won't hold if I raise it, "… it's not because I've been running." That's all I need to say. A smile flickers across his beautiful face and suddenly he can't hold his tears away, and he lets them fall. Are they tears of happiness or sorrow? Or perhaps both?

He kisses me again, and this time I respond by kissing him back. (You taste like champagne and chocolate. Champagne has alcohol in it. I'm addicted to alcohol and I'm addicted to you. Does that make you similar to alcohol?) His tongue is begging for entrance, and I give it to him. The salty taste of tears mingles and I'm wondering why we cry. (Do we both give in for the tears that we did not allow to come?) The kiss is desperate and we both cling onto each other as if we both will die if we let go.

His hands are warm against my skin when they search their way under my shirt, and in the loss of control we both are in, I arch up to come closer to the warmth of his body. (The body I've only had in my dreams before this. Is this a dream, I wonder? Am I going to wake up with my body aching in the need of your proximity?) He's straddling me now, and his hands are hungry like those of someone who haven't made love in ages. I don't complain, though, I only moan passionately when his hips press against mine. (We're still out on the lawn, Potter. Anyone can see us, but do we care?)

Who is there really who would be able to see us here at Malfoy Manor, by the way? The sun, possibly, but we're hidden from the sun right now. We're only watched by the shadows.

It feels like I'm finally complete.

- The End -


End file.
